The Heart of Restoration Program’s Specific Services

• Basic Skills encompass the necessary essentials to be successful in the transition to adulthood. Its purpose is to provide instruction and preparation for self- sufficiency is a variety of areas.  Heart of Restoration provides the following in its life skill curriculum:

  • Budgeting and Money Management: Explores how to handle paying bills with limited resources, establishing credit, checking accounts, writing checks, deposits, and withdrawals, balancing a checkbook, and establishing priorities.

  • Menu and Food Preparation: Includes shopping on a budget with attention to nutrition and comparison pricing. Instruction includes understanding recipes and proper storage of supplies and leftovers. Orientation to kitchen appliances, storage, cleanliness and utensil is included.

  • Housekeeping and Consumer Education: Includes instruction regarding upkeep of furniture and basic interior surfaces such as walls, windows, and doors. Includes information on heating, lighting, and water use with efficient with minor repair to plumbing included.

  • Transportation: Includes use of the local mass transit system in the respective areas, use of bus tokens and passes and cabs. (Basic car care is included for participants who have their own vehicle.)

  • Personal Management: Includes learning how to obtain legal documents such as birth records, social security cards, driver’s license, or other identification. How to protect these items including safeguards on credit card numbers, accounts and other valuables are included.

  • Recreation: Includes understand the importance of personal leisure and recreation in relation to handling work, school, and other obligations. Emphasis is on planning leisure activities, which reduce stress provides relaxations and entertainment.

 

Heart of Restoration provides activities such as picnics, dinners, swimming movies, and sporting events as both regularly planned activities and incentives for successful performance.

 

• Interpersonal Skill Building is to assist in the development of healthy relationships with peers to improve communication, decision making, and stress management. Specific activities to be provided include:

  • Effective Communication: Includes group discussion on how communication effects everyday relationships in business and personal life. Videos, role, play and group exercises are used to simulate real situations and dialogue.

  • Values Clarification: Includes discussion on establishing values for oneself in areas of person worth, self-esteem and peer relationships.

  • Problem-solving: Includes working through various situations with emphasis on identifying alternatives, implementing a plan of actions and initiating a response. Various situations center around peer relationships, budgeting issues, employment situations and living arrangements.

  • All three of three of these are done in group settings but can but can be on an individual basis depending on the needs of the youth.

 

 Educational Advancement is given high priority as an essential item for any youth’s future. It is considered to be a fundamental ingredient and an obligation for participation in the program.

 

All persons entering the must commit to developing a plan for high school graduation, GED preparation classes, vocational training or college. The part of the initial admission guidelines is strongly emphasized.

 

• Job Preparation and Attainment is also given high priority in the overall approach to a successful transitional living program. It is essential if genuine independence is to be realized in the future.

  • Classroom group instruction is provided on appropriate dress and grooming, interviewing, resume preparation, and work ethic. Role-plays are used to simulate real situations.

  • Program participants over the age of 18 are expected to maintain full-time employment, full-time school and part-time employment, or a combination of the two.

    • Full-time employment = at least 30 hours

    • Part-time employment = at least 15 hours per week.

    • Full-time school = Attending at least 6 hours per day in an accredited school.

    • Part-time school = attending school at least 4 hours per day in an accredited school.

Initially, the program covers all costs for care. Upon employment the youth is responsible to pay a portion (60%) towards an escrow savings account for that participant to be used for their independent living arrangements.

Program staff review work performance, job difficulties, attendance or scheduling problems, conduct follow-ups with job sites and make concerted effort to recognize positive performance. When participants receive a paycheck they must complete a budget report form showing how they have budgeted the income, including the escrow savings for future use.

• Mental Health Care is provided to help prepare for the difficulties of handling the conflicts that lead to this situation. Participants need to feel secure in themselves and those around them if they are to focus on tasks ahead. The approach to mental health needs includes:

  • Individual and group counseling pertaining to identified issues indicated within the case plan to developed by the participants and program staff;

  • Drug abuse education and prevention offered in a group discussion format;

  • Identification of referral services available in the community and the entry process to receive those services;

  • Specific mental health counseling related to suicidal, depression and other behavior oriented or emotional conditions.

  • All program participants have at least weekly contact with either the case manager of coordinator and detailed case notes describing the purpose and outcomes of those meetings are entered in the case file.

• Drug Education and Prevention - Due to the high incidence of substance abuse associated with “at-risk” youths and adults, a local drug education/ prevention agency will be utilized for drug abuse prevention programming. They will provide certified prevention specialists who come on-site to provide group discussion related education and prevention. The objectives will be:

  • To inform and educate about the hazards of drug use.

  • To provide discussion on casual factors that can lead to substance abuse.

  • To provide opportunity for participant involvement as peer educators.

  • To create public awareness and advocate for drug abuse prevention.

• Physical Health Care is provided to minimize risk of contagious diseases and infections as well as to show the importance of good health.

  • All participants using our services receive a complete physical within 7 days unless verification of the same can be made within the past year. A TB tine test is also included. Dental and optical services are also provided at no charge unless insurance is available.

  • Health assessments include a substance abuse screening instrument to identify potential or current abuses.

  • Emergency treatment will be available within a short proximity to the community building facility.

 

Issue of Personal Development, Need for Assistance, and Geography Served

There is a continued and growing need for programs that help youth and adults in the Houston and Harris County area. The Houston, Texas Latchkey for youth estimates that three in ten Texas children of working families are unsupervised in the afternoons, according to data released today by the Afterschool Alliance.  Not enough state resources are being devoted to address the needs of this population. Texas specific sampling finds that just 18 percent of children in Texas from working families are in afterschool programs.

 

Conditions of Runaway Youths, Homeless Adults and Their Families

There are a number of conditions individuals our region that contributes to the homelessness in our area. Some youth and adults become homeless when their families suffer financial crises resulting from limited employment opportunities, insufficient wages, and lack of affordable housing, no medical insurance, or inadequate welfare benefits. Family problems are another principal cause. In one study, 46% of runaway and homeless youth had been physically abused and 17% had been forced into unwanted sexual activity by a family or household member (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Evaluation of Runaway and Homeless Youth, 20077).

 

Homeless youth and adults come to us with a wide range of complicated issues. Youths, adults, and their families may be involved with alcohol and drugs. Either party may be using or abusing drugs or dealing drugs. Drugs used include marijuana, crack, crystal-meth, cocaine, and speed. Consequently, we trust that participants will be referred to us from a halfway houses after treatment for drug addiction. Youth, adults, and their families may have limited education; they are frequently high school dropouts.

 

The Heart of Restoration Program will receive a number of referrals from the Department of Corrections and the juvenile justice system. Many of our youth and adults have been involved in crime. We will see a number of gang members and prostitutes. Survival and sex are examples of everyday issues we face with our participants.